Leonard Feather
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| Leonard Feather | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Leonard Geoffrey Feather |
| Born | 13 September 1914 |
| Origin |  London, U.K. |
| Died | 22 September 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist Composer |
| Instrument(s) | Piano |
Leonard Geoffrey Feather (13 September 1914–22 September 1994) was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.
Feather was born in London into a strictly conformist upper-middle-class Jewish family. He learnt to play the piano and clarinet (though was not formally trained), and had started writing about jazz and film by his late teens. At the age of twenty-one Feather made his first visit to the United States, and after working in the U.K. and the U.S. as a record producer finally settled in New York City in 1939, where he lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1960. Feather served as chief jazz critic for the Los Angeles Times until his death. He died in Sherman Oaks, California at the age of eighty.
Feather's compositions have been widely recorded, including "Evil Gal Blues" and "Blowtop Blues" by Dinah Washington, and what is possibly his biggest hit, "How Blue Can You Get?" by blues artists Louis Jordan and B. B. King, and some of his own recordings as a bandleader are still available. But it was as a writer on jazz (as a journalist, critic, historian, and campaigner) that he made his biggest mark: "Feather was for a long time the most widely read and most influential writer on jazz."[1] Even jazz enthusiasts who didn't read his books and articles would have known him from the liner notes that he wrote for hundreds of jazz albums.
He is the father of lyricist/songwriter Lorraine Feather.
Contents |
[edit] Partial bibliography
- 1956: The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz (Horizon)
- 1993 reprint (Da Capo) ISBN 0306805294
- 1966: The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties
- 1977: Inside Jazz (Da Capo) ISBN 0306800764
- 1977: Pleasures of Jazz (Delacorte) ISBN 0385287860
- 1987: From Satchmo to Miles (Da Capo) ISBN 1417618922
- 1987: Encyclopedic Yearbook of Jazz reprint (Da Capo) ISBN 0306762897
- 1987: The Jazz Years — Earwitness to an Era (Da Capo)
- 1988: Book of Jazz (Horizon) ISBN 0818012021
- 1999: The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz co-written with Ira Gitler, second (revised) edition (Oxford University Press) ISBN 0195074181
- 2000: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
[edit] Discography
- 1937–1945: Leonard Feather 1937–1945 (Classics)
- 1951: Leonard Feather's Swingin' Swedes (Prestige)
- 1954: Dixieland vs. Birdland (MGM)
- 1954: Cats Vs. Chicks (MGM)
- 1954: Winter Sequence (MGM)
- 1956: West Coast vs. East Coast (MGM)
- 1956: Swingin' on the Vibories (MGM)
- 1957: Hi-Fi Suite (MGM)
- 1957: 52nd Street (VSOP)
- 1958: Swingin' Seasons (MGM)
- 1959: Jazz from Two Sides (Concept)
- 1971: Night Blooming Jazzmen (Mainstream)
- 1971: Freedom Jazz Dance (Mainstream)
- 1971–1972: Night Blooming (Mainstream)
- 1972: All-Stars (Mainstream)
- 1997: Presents Bop (Tofrec)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Brian Priestley, in Carr, Fairweather, & Priestley, p.248
[edit] Sources and external links
- The Leonard Feather Scrapbooks
- Leonard Feather — brief biography by Scott Yanow, for AllMusic.
- Carr, Ian, Digby Fairweather, & Brian Priestley. Jazz: The Rough Guide. London: Rough Guides. ISBN 1-85828-528-3
- Richard Cook & Brian Morton. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 6th edition. ISBN 0-140-51521-6
